Question: Maybe someone with agricultural expertise can answer this. Ray's entire cornfield is large and obviously worth a lot of money. How much would the small section of corn that he plowed under for the baseball field have been worth in comparison to the rest of the crop once sold?
Charles Austin Miller
20th Sep 2021
Field of Dreams (1989)
25th Jun 2018
Field of Dreams (1989)
Question: At the end of the movie, Ray realises that the messages he had been receiving were about his dad. "If you build it, he will come." Ray built the ball field and his dad appeared. "Ease his pain." Ray played a game of catch with his dad. How does the message "Go the distance" refer to his dad?
Answer: Ray's mission was not confined to easing the pain of his deceased father. Ray himself had a lot of pain and regret over arguing with his father about baseball. Ray was also supernaturally guided to seek out the angry writer Terence Mann (who had always dreamed of playing professional baseball, but never did). When he travels to Boston looking for Terence Mann, Ray and Terence both hear the words "Go the distance," convincing them to travel to Chisholm, Minnesota, looking for an ex-ballplayer named "Moonlight" Graham (who never actually got to bat in the big league, either). As it turned out, Graham was long-since deceased, but Ray and Terence meet Graham's young ghost who returns with them to join the cornfield team. So, "Ease his pain," applied not only to Ray's father, but also to Ray himself and to writer Terence Mann and to Moonlight Graham. "Go the distance" was about traveling to bring both Terence Mann and Moonlight Graham into this magical place where all of their lost dreams could be fulfilled, as well.
I think "go the distance" has a metaphorical connotation of seeing your choices through in life, and finding the beauty in them. It also implies doing the work you need to do confront your past, resolve your past hurts, and find the strength to move forward.
Well, in that sense, "Go the distance" is just a generic platitude. What we know is that each of the supernatural messages carried an urgent instructional connotation, calling for Ray to be proactive toward a specific goal: Bringing together these anguished souls (both dead and living) to live out their lost dreams and finally find peace.
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Chosen answer: In modern times (say, over the last 10 years) corn crops yield about $240 in profit per acre. In the mid-to-late 1980s (when this movie was made) the profit yield was far less, maybe only $150 or less profit per acre. Today, most farms produce about 1100 acres of corn per season; but, back then, most farms produced around 600 acres per season. Of course, these are all just average figures. So, let's say Ray had an average Iowa farm of 600 cultivated acres in 1989, expecting to profit $150 per acre. Optimistically, Ray would profit about $90,000 on his total crop. Meanwhile, the acreage of a large baseball field (with 90-foot baselines) is only about 5 acres. Which means Ray plowed under only about $750 worth of his crop profits to open up land area for the baseball field. It doesn't sound like much of a sacrifice at all, in terms of corn. Ray could still potentially profit $89,250 on his remaining crop (assuming he had the farm hands and heavy equipment to harvest it).
Charles Austin Miller
Thanks! The plot seemed a bit far-fetched by implying that he would go completely bankrupt because he sacrificed five acres to build a baseball field. And it appeared that not all of those five acres near the house were previously being used for growing corn. Factoring in the other incidental building costs would be a different consideration, however.
raywest ★
Yeah, the 5 acres of corn was not a bank-breaker. My impression was that Ray probably cut down the corn himself at no great loss; but he then mortgaged his farm to have that one small piece of the cornfield leveled and professionally developed with ballpark-quality turf, baselines, stadium lighting and fencing, et cetera, not to mention the bleachers and professional-grade field equipment...all of which would total, what, a half-million bucks (or more) in the 1980s? Ray's brother-in-law rightly thought it was an insane risk that would result in bank foreclosure.
Charles Austin Miller
I just watched it again. It's mentioned they paid for building the field using all their savings, so presumably nothing more is owed. Another year passes and there is another crop of corn to be harvested, but the bank is threatening to foreclose.
raywest ★
Maybe it's a plot hole or a deleted scene; because, if the bank was threatening foreclosure, then a mortgage of some kind existed somewhere.
Charles Austin Miller
He did spend a lot to build the field, and those profit margin numbers are best-case, no?
Yeah, all the figures I provided were just averages for the year 1989; but the figures do demonstrate that cutting down 5 acres of corn didn't significantly impact Ray's profit on the whole crop. It wasn't cutting down the corn that cost him money (as the original question inquired); rather, it was developing the cleared 5 acres into a level, professional-standard baseball field that cost him a ton of money.
Charles Austin Miller